As astronomers gaze toward nearby planetary systems in search of life, they are focusing their attention on each system's habitable zone, where heat radiated from the star is just right to keep a planet's water in liquid form.

An international team, led by astronomers at the University of Hertfordshire in the UK, have discovered one of the coolest sub-stellar bodies ever found outside our own solar system, orbiting the red dwarf star Wolf 940, some 40 light years from Earth.

DOCTOR Who is the TV show viewers would most like to see on the big screen. The revived BBC hit pipped US sitcom Friends in a Radio Times poll, with its spin-off Torchwood in ninth place. Another Beeb sci-fi favourite, comedy Red Dwarf, took third spot, followed by US hits Heroes and CSI.

A recent study found 20 new star systems in the sunâ€™s local neighborhood. Most of the new discoveries are red dwarfs, much smaller and dimmer than the sun. Yet scientists are growing more confident that these stars could host habitable planets.

A new explanation for forming "super-Earths" suggests that they are more likely to be found orbiting red dwarf stars -- the most abundant type of star -- than gas giant planets like Jupiter and Saturn.

Red Dwarf -- A red dwarf is a small star on the main sequence, either late K or M spectral type.
They have a diameter and mass of less than one-third that of the Sun (down to 0.08 solar masses, which are Brown dwarves) and a surface temperature of less than 3,500 K. They emit little light, sometimes as little as 1/10,000th that of the sun.
Due to the slow rate at which they burn hydrogen red dwarves have a enormous lifespan, estimates range from a tens of billions up to trillions of...